Chapter Twenty-Two
AURELIA
I have no one to blame but myself when Khalil knocks me to the ground for the third time. It’s our sparring session, and I’m distracted. It’s getting hotter every day with the sun in my eyes becoming more obnoxious by the minute, but that’s not what’s bothering me.
“Ow,” I say accusingly toward the sometimes-gentle giant—when he’s not training me to become a killing machine. Khalil really takes these sparring lessons seriously, and the bruises I usually walk away with are starting to overlap but none more than my confidence so I wear them with pride.
“You’re not focusing,” he snaps when I send him a knowing glare.
The reason for my distraction is currently watching us spar from the porch a few feet away.
Zeke and I have gone right back to where we were pre-waterfall—before he had his fingers in my pussy and his tongue in my mouth. Before he told me how he feels.
Guiltily, I guess I still find myself comparing him to Seth sometimes, which only adds to my confusion. Seth was steadfast in his feelings for me, never wavering once. Zeke runs hot and cold and leaves me feeling less secure.
I’d sworn at least a million times in the weeks since the falls that I was done with him, but the moment he looks my way I’m stuck in place wondering if today will be the day he tells me again how he wants to kneel for me like I’m his princess and he’s my knight.
But he never does.
It’s like he gave me a taste of what could be before snatching it all away.
In Zeke’s defense, he did warn me that he wasn’t ready, and silly me, I still hoped for more.
“On the contrary,” I say as I struggle to rise and dust myself off. “I haven’t stopped fantasizing about seriously maiming you since you forced me out here to practice.”
“And yet you still haven’t been able to land a single punch.” I swing on him, and he easily blocks it. “Just as I thought. Pathetic.”
“This is abuse. You’re mean.”
“I’m not your boyfriend right now. I’m your trainer. Now try to hit me.”
I swing on command, once again forgetting to keep my guard up, and Khalil decks me with his gloved hand right between the eyes. The blow is hard enough to send me sprawling out into the grass.
We do this for ten more minutes before I threaten to send my other boyfriend to beat him up. Khalil tosses back his head and laughs as if it is the funniest thing in the world.
“Thoooooorin!” I shout.
It only takes a few seconds before Thorin appears at the door. His gaze is alert even though his rumpled clothing makes it obvious that I woke him from a nap. “What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing. Khalil just told me that he can easily beat you with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back.”
A few feet away, I hear a quiet snort, but I’m not brave enough to look Zeke’s way. He clearly has no qualms about looking because I haven’t stopped feeling his eyes on me since Khalil dragged me out here and Zeke followed without a word.
“Really?” Khalil scoffs. “You’re going to sic Thorin on me? That won’t work. I taught him everything he knows.”
“Maybe not everything,” Thorin denies with a roll of his shoulders to show off his power. “I’ve picked up a few things on my own.”
When Khalil narrows his gaze like he wants him to prove it, I grin like I’d just won a prize.
Men are so easy.
“Get him,” I command with a finger pointed at a glowering Khalil. “Show no mercy.”
Thorin hesitates, but we both see the moment he capitulates to my demand.
He removes his shirt, and Khalil rolls his eyes before he removes his gloves.
I think that maybe he’s refusing until they both square off with narrowed gazes and a calculating look in their eyes that says they know this will be no easy match.
Flouncing over to the porch where Zeke is lazily lounging on the steps as if he doesn’t have a care in the word, I keep my distance—as much as the stairs will allow—and pop a squat a couple of steps below him.
It’s not until the first punch is thrown by Thorin, which Khalil narrowly dodges, that Zeke speaks. “You’re good. You know that?”
I peer over my shoulder with an innocent expression perfected by years of pretending I was someone I wasn’t in order to sell out stadiums. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Zeke nods toward Thorin and Khalil. “You got them to fight so you can get out of training.”
“Maybe.” I shrug. “Can’t prove it.”
He chuckles and then leans forward, bringing his face closer to mine. “I don’t have to, princess.” Reaching out, he fingers a curl. “Or maybe I don’t want to.”
Feeling like he’d reached a flaming hand inside my chest and used it to squeeze my heart, I turn my head away, forcing him to let go of my hair. “You didn’t eat this morning.”
“I ate.”
“But not what I made.”
“You know why I can’t, Aurelia.”
I scoff. “No… I don’t know why.”
I can feel his gaze burning into the side of my face, but I don’t take the bait. Instead, I watch Khalil throw a vicious jab into Thorin’s side before throwing him off of him.
“It feels…intimate.”
“And we’re not intimate? Are you serious? You finger banged me over a waterfall and then spit a lot of game that I was stupid enough to fall for. You’ve been inside me. And yes, I know it wasn’t you you, but it was your dick. You saw me naked. You spanked me with a switch. You…”
“I what?” he challenges when I fall silent.
“Seth ate my ass,” I confess just to be a bitch. Zeke’s eyes flare and then they lower like he’s wishing it had been him. Seeing this, I shake my head and chuckle dryly. “You’re also full of shit.”
“Am I? Or maybe you just can’t handle the fact that I don’t want you, so you twist the truth however you need to.”
“It sounds to me like that’s all you. And for the record, I don’t want you either.”
“So if I offered to nibble on your sweet little pussy while you watched your boyfriends fight over you, you’d say no?”
My pussy clenches at the vision while I outwardly scoff at the notion. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” he repeats softly.
“You’re teasing me.”
“You teased me first,” he says, referring to that first time we ran together.
“That’s not the same. I actually wanted you to kiss me,” I blurt before I can think better of it. My eyes squeeze closed, but no matter how much I pray, the ground will not open up and swallow me whole.
It feels like forever before Zeke finally replies. “My offer was as real as yours, princesa.”
My jaw drops, but when I turn to face him, he’s gone. The front door slams closed behind him.
I’m torn between following him and staying when Khalil flips Thorin over his shoulder in a spectacular move of power. When Thorin lands on his back and doesn’t immediately regain his feet—in fact, he doesn’t move at all—I shove away from the steps and run over to him.
Thorin finally groans and sits up when I’m two steps away. Khalil, the victor of the match, holds out a hand to help him stand, which Thorin accepts.
I push away the concern once they’re both standing and facing me. “Oh, wow. I am so turned on right now.”
“That’s too bad because your punishment for baiting us into fighting is no orgasms for twenty-four hours.”
Something in the corner of my eye catches my attention so I don’t react immediately to Khalil’s decree. Instead, my gaze follows the movement at the far edge of the clearing. “What the hell?” I mutter when I make out fur. “What is that?”
“Nice try, wolf.”
“No, seriously. There’s something there.” I point to where I just saw movement a second ago.
Khalil and Thorin follow my finger and wait, but nothing happens. “I don’t see anything.”
“I swear to you I saw something moving a moment ago. I think it’s an animal.”
Thorin pushes me behind him while staring in that direction.
“Possibly. We are in the wilds.” Despite Khalil’s dismissive tone, he walks over to the shed and grabs the shotgun. When I arch a brow at him, he shrugs. “Just in case.”
“Look! There!” I whisper-shout when I see movement again. “You guys see that, right?”
“Yeah.” Thorin tilts his head and squints. “It looks like—”
“A wolf,” I finish for him and then I whine, “Oh my God. Not again.”
“It’s not fully grown,” Khalil says. “It looks like it’s just a pup. Maybe it’s lost.”
“Or not,” Thorin says in a dark tone when a much larger wolf appears from the trees. I instantly recognize the tawny fur.
“Meera?”
I start forward, and Khalil grabs my arm with a warning look. “Don’t you dare.”
“Is that blood?” I say when I realize her fur is matted and darker than usual in some spots. “I think she’s hurt!”
“And still capable of seriously injuring or even killing you. If she is hurt, it just means she’s that much more dangerous.”
I watch helplessly as Meera drops the black pup she’s carrying inside one of the brown whiskey barrels I was saving for the strawberries I was going to try to grow later. She picks up the smaller gray one and drops it inside as well before bounding off into the trees.
The three of us move to the steps on the porch to sit and wait, but after half an hour, Meera still doesn’t return.
“We need to find her,” I decide after I’ve grown anxious.
“It disturbs me how much we have to keep reminding you that Meera isn’t a pet, Goldilocks. She’s a wild animal.”
I hear the front door creak open behind me and glance back to see Zeke walking through with a glass of milk in one hand and a grilled cheese that I certainly didn’t make him in hand. I barely suppress the urge to roll my eyes and turn back to watch the tree line where Meera disappeared.
“What’s going on?” Zeke asks around a mouthful.
“It’s the she-wolf,” Thorin says tightly. “She just dropped her pups off on our doorstep and left.”
“What?”
“We think she’s injured and needed a safe place to hide them.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any fucking sense, does it? Wolves avoid humans. They don’t use us for daycare.”
“I keep telling you guys. Meera isn’t like any other wolf. She’s smarter,” I say proudly.